Due to the highly airtight structure in living environment, a demand toward the elimination of microorganisms being suspended in air and hazardous for humans so as to have healthy and cozy life has increasingly grown. So as to satisfy the demand, filters with various antimicrobial agents attached thereon have been developed in recent years.
Because these filters are of a method to aspirate spatial air of space to filter off atmospheric microorganisms, however, these filters should essentially be maintained during long-term use, for example, by a filter exchange. Additionally, the performance of these filters is insufficient. Therefore, satisfactory performance has not yet been achieved. The method is insufficient as the method for eliminating microorganisms.
For generally carrying out the evaluation of eliminating suspended microorganisms, air containing microorganisms is passed through such filters to count the number of microorganisms filtered off. However, the concentration of microorganisms, which are subjected to be measured, suspended in air cannot be measured.
Meanwhile, as a method for eliminating microorganisms, there is a method of allowing particles such as ionized ions to irradiate microorganisms for a sterilizing treatment. However, it has not yet been carried out to measure and evaluate the performance of eliminating microorganisms with the sterilizing treatment of microorganisms utilizing the method.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for evaluating elimination of microorganisms including allowing particles, particularly ion particles including positive ions and negative ions for the sterilizing treatment of microorganisms, particularly viruses to irradiate such microorganisms so as to evaluate the sterilizing effect, and an apparatus for evaluating elimination of microorganisms, which can be used for the method.